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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26501929">it's not much but there's proof</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkCaviness/pseuds/InkCaviness'>InkCaviness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cat Acquisition, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Introspection, Mental Health Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Snapshots, Trust Issues, but it's just all about a cat idk man, no beta we die like Glenn, other characters in the background but this is dimitri rambling, this is vent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:55:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26501929</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkCaviness/pseuds/InkCaviness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts out with nights spent awake and alone, staring at a screen for hours on end, sitting on the kitchen floor at 3am, eating pasta straight from the pot and listening to the same song on repeat until every familiar word only sounds like noise, but the silence is louder than any speaker could be. </p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Dimitri adopts a cat</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>it's not much but there's proof</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_V76Dm42bY">Achilles Come Down</a><br/>by Gang of Youths which i highly recommend listening to</p>
<p>this really might as well just be a diary entry with the names changed but like. projection time whoop whoop</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>You're scaring us</em><br/>
<em>And all of us</em><br/>
<em>Some of us love you</em><br/>
<em>Achilles, it's not much but there's proof</em>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It starts out with a craigslist ad.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>giving away cat</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>female cat, 1 ½ years old. she is looking for a new home.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>we don’t have the time and are moving soon.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>only self-pickup and bring your own box. has to be gone by the end of the month</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>There’s a picture attached of a small white and black patterned cat sitting in a bathtub, staring up at the camera with wide eyes. He squints at his phone, trying to see better but the picture seems to be a bit blurry. There’s not much more to see or read except that, yes, it is indeed a cat.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe it doesn’t start out with a craigslist ad. It starts out with an empty apartment and every article or twitter post about how much a cat can liven up a home. About how much a cat can really make an apartment into a <em>home</em>. It starts out with nights spent awake and alone, staring at a screen for hours on end, sitting on the kitchen floor at 3am, eating pasta straight from the pot and listening to the same song on repeat until every familiar word only sounds like noise, but the silence is louder than any speaker could be. It starts with the noises that filter into the apartment during the day. Children playing outside, the gentle woosh of the tram every few minutes like clockwork, the continuous sound of two men playing table tennis for hours every Saturday, ping, ping, ping, until the sun sets and the sounds become less human, just noise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe it doesn’t start out with that. It started out years ago. Years of gentle buildup of fears and anxieties and worse, the fear that it’s not all just imagined. The fear of the fear being <em>justified </em>isn’t the one taking his breath away every time he leaves the house but it is the one keeping him up through every too-hot summer night and keeping him in bed on every too-cold winter morning. Somehow it’s the one that settled in once everything got better, that nagging fear that, really, everything <em>shouldn’t </em>be better and-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Hey watcha looking at?” Sylvain suddenly leans over and against him and Dimitri angles the phone to let him take a closer look. “A cat?”</p>
<p>Dimitri hums in agreement and goes to click away the ad but-</p>
<p>“You should adopt her.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t react, at first, just keeps his thumb hovering over the “back” button and stares down at his phone.</p>
<p>“I mean look you don’t have to, obviously,” Sylvain continues, “but you’ve got the time right now and maybe a little buddy would be good for you! Look at her eyes; don’t you wanna help her out?”</p>
<p>It’s true, he does have the time, there’s really not much to do besides therapy sessions and grocery runs after dark and pretending that there’s no cloud of wasted potential slowly accumulating under the ceiling of his room and-</p>
<p>“I will…think about it,” he says instead.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He does. He messages the seller that day an hour after the sun sets and three days later he’s sitting anxiously in the passenger seat of Mercedes car. It’s always a bit cramped, his legs folded awkwardly, and when he shuts the door he fears accidentally ripping it off its hinges. He doesn’t though, and the car rattles on faithfully to the pet store. Mercedes is humming along quietly to radio, a song Dimitri isn’t entirely sure is about lesbians or the Goddess.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The store is only mildly overwhelming on a Tuesday morning, a handful of tired looking patrons wandering the aisle and the scent of stale dog food heavy in the air. He manages to pick out the basics, supplies and toys and a variation of cat foods with the ingredients printed far too small on the back, and, of course, the box needed for pickup. They’d agreed to meet up in the parking lot of a nearby supermarket, an arrangement Sylvain had described as “shady as fuck” and Mercedes volunteers to drive him there as well, only demanding the rights to first playtime with the cat as a bribe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s a strange interaction. Not as shady as feared and by far not his shadiest meeting but he can still feel dread start to pool in his stomach as he lifts the little cat out of the seller’s pet carrier and into his own. The man hands him a bag with toys and a few packets of cat food and somehow that’s it. That’s all it takes to become a cat owner. He walks back to Mercedes’ car and stop dead in his tracks, eyes locked with the woman who just got out of the next car over. She shoots him a suspicious look, eyes flitting between his face and the pet carrier in his hands and Dimitri can feel bile rise in his throat, palms suddenly slick with sweat and the woman keeps staring, whispering into her phone and-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Are you coming, sweetie?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Mercedes’ voice pulls him out of his thoughts, not quite a yell but insistent enough to make him finally hurry back to the car.</p>
<p>The ride back to his apartment is worse, still cramped but now also with the box in his lap. They’re barely out of the parking lot when the cat start crying. She’s just meowing but the sound is high pitched and distressed and Dimitri starts curling in around the pet carrier protectively, as if he can tell her that everything’s going to be fine that way. But what if it won’t, what if this is a horrible mistake and she’s <em>right </em>to cry because how could he ever offer her the home she deserves and-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“So what are you going to name her?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s grateful, yet again, to Mercedes for pulling him out of the spiraling thoughts in his own head.</p>
<p>“Well,” he starts and looks down at the carrier to get a better look at her, “she kind of looks like the cat from those cat food commercials.”</p>
<p>“Oh, which one?”</p>
<p>“Felix.”</p>
<p>There’s a moment of silence. Silence and the insistent, distraught meowing of the cat.</p>
<p>“You want to name your cat Felix?” There’s no real judgement in Mercedes’ voice, just a slight tinge of concern and Dimitri picks at a fray on his jeans.</p>
<p>“I’m not really good at naming anything.” He clears his throat. “And I forgot to ask her old name.”</p>
<p>Mercedes hums quietly. “Maybe that’s good. Maybe…a new name is good for a new start.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It is a new start. For both of them, in a way. The cat is surprisingly forward once she’s in his apartment and Dimitri sits perched on the edge of his bed as he watches her explore the space. It’s clean, for once, no heaps of laundry on the floor or wobbly stacks of dishes piled high on his desk. A little too clean for the cat, who avoids the free floor space and instead tries to climb into his one and only shelf, knocking over a few book in the process. There’s really not much else. His apartment is sparse at best and empty at worst. One clothes rack with an assortment of almost the same oversized dark shirt again and again. They’re a comfort until it’s finally cold enough to wrap himself in the parka that’s stowed away in the basement.</p>
<p>Cat food, it turns out, is an issue. He’d assumed it’s all pretty much the same but it seems that the cat, quietly named Felix, only touches junks of meat in some sort of gravy. Dimitri understands the sentiment of preferring a texture over taste, but it still proves to be difficult. This cat food is <em>unhealthy</em>, he soon realizes, hunched over in front of his laptop, frantically trying to find out what nutrition the small animal in his care requires. It’s complicated. Mostly meat, but also innards and vitamins and no sugar, no grain, no suspicious fillers and there’s so few options meeting every requirement and what if he’s missing something, what if there’s a supplement she needs and he doesn’t <em>know</em>, what if he’s hurting her, slowly but horribly and she’ll get sick and he won’t know what to do and he knows he knows he knows he never should have done this-</p>
<p>A small head bumps against his shin. Slowly he looks down from where he’d been staring at the wall to find the cat leaning expectantly against his leg. He’s not sure what she’s expecting. Food, probably, he thinks and his throat closes up at the idea of going back to that train of thought. Maybe not food. Carefully he reaches down to scratch the back of her head. Immediately the cat chirps and starts purring, louder than he ever heard a cat purr before.</p>
<p>Maybe, he thinks, maybe this is going to turn out okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The thoughts don’t go away. He wasn’t expecting them to, he’s had enough experience with his brain to know that they won’t just vanish like that but it’s easier to handle when the cat always seems to purr in his presence. He tells his therapist. It’s an awkward affaire somehow, admitting that he’s taken on such a responsibility when he usually worries so deeply about not being enough. She says it’s good. A step forward, a way for him to structure is life around something other than himself. That night he realizes the cat might be alive until Dimitri is in his thirties. It’s just an observation and yet it makes it hard to breathe suddenly. There are no plans for that time in his mind, no ideas for how he’s going to shape his life now when most people hadn’t expected him to make it through the past five years. But now suddenly he’s tied to another, far more vulnerable life and he’s not entirely sure if the feeling tingling in his fingertips is excitement or deep unnerving dread. It might be both.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s doing well now, he knows this. He manages to get up in the morning, at least most days. He manages to take his medication, almost always without fail. His dishes aren’t always washed, but at least now they’re accumulating in the kitchen so the cat won’t get to them. And the better he’s doing, the deeper runs the fear of the inevitable crash. The days where he barely knows the difference between awake and asleep, when getting up is barely an option and remembering chores is almost impossible. It’s no longer a fear of neglecting himself but now also of. Felix. He doesn’t want to prove his own anxieties right. It’s an endless spiral, vaguely downwards but mostly just going in a circle; a circle of dreading the inevitable and blaming himself for not simply stopping it in its tracks, knowing that he has no power to stop it, only soften the fall. He should stop the fallout now, should find a different home for the cat, anything, a better home, someone who can be there for her the way she deserves all the time without the constant worry of failure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He opens the old class slowly turned friend group chat instead, selects a recent picture of the cat sitting behind is books in the shelf and simply captions is “<em>cat .)</em>”.</p>
<p>The reactions are immediate. Annette and Ashe seem to have lost all capability of coherenz thought, only replying with excited rows of keysmashes and emojis. Dedue, on the other hand, only writes “<em>Congratulation.</em>”<em>, </em>followed by what appears to be the generic smiling emoji but with cat ears.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dimitri smiles down at his phone, then gets up to go search for the cat. She seems to really like sitting in the bathtub and he sits down on the edge to show her the group chat. It’s nonsensical, of course, but for some reason it seems right.</p>
<p>“Look,” he says, “they like you.”</p>
<p>Felix, the cat, chirps in reply and starts trying to drink water out of the bathtub drain.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>By the time he shifts his focus back to the group chat there’s a message from Mercedes saying she’s glad to see the cat is adjusting well and a text from Sylvain.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>man u rlly did it!!!!!! good for u!!!!!</em>”</p>
<p>It’s followed by a frankly indecipherable row of emojis.</p>
<p>“<em>what’s the little lady’s name??????</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dimitri hesitates before replying. It’s a little strange, really. He knows it. It’s not even a girl’s name but he’s been using it in his head so much now that changing it seems weird.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>Felix</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s a moment of silence before several people start typing. No message gets sent. Then, finally:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>you named your fucking cat after me</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not really a question, still Dimitri replies “No”, followed by a youtube link it took him just a while too long to find.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nothing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>you named your fucking cat after the cat food commercial</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Silence.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Felix is typing…</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>you named your fucking cat after the cat food commercial not me your oldest human friend felix</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Sylvain changed the subject to “Felix The Cat Fanclub™”.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The thread of messages suddenly makes him giddy, far more than he expected, a sudden spike of absolute adoration for his friends. He’s glad for it, after years of numbness and fog surrounding his brain, too strong to remember what it was like to really love his friends. He doesn’t quite know where to put those emotions and the smile on his face feels painful. Instead, he holds the phone out to the cat again.</p>
<p>“They really like you!” he croaks out. His voice comes out strained.</p>
<p>It’s good, it’s too much of a good feeling but it’s <em>something</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The fever starts up over a week after her vaccination. It was fine, everything was fine in the evening and then the next day she won’t come out from under the bed. It feels like all at once everything comes crushing back. He did this. He doesn’t know how but he <em>did this</em> and now she’s scared and sick and his hands are shaking. And he can’t go down that spiral, he can’t allow himself that right now. Mercedes can’t take them to the vet again so he has to walk to a closer by clinic. Everything is too much, the waiting room feels too large and too quiet except for the radio blaring and the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears. He barely understands what the vet is saying, that old familiar fog settling over all of his senses and dulling everything down to a muddled muted mush of <em>too much</em>.</p>
<p>Three times they go. She gets antibiotics and spends almost a week seemingly in the same haze Dimitri is trying to wade through. For once, she doesn’t spend the nights running around the apartment, knocking everything over that gets in her way. Dimitri doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t feel awake.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The fever passes, as all things do. After barely a week she’s back to brimming with energy and Dimitri doesn’t know what to do with himself. She shouldn’t trust him so easily, not right after his fear was proven wrong. It’s going to happen again. He’s going to mess up again and that time who knows whether it can be remedied so easily. The dishes start piling high on his desk again. They shouldn’t be, they should be in the kitchen, out of reach for little cat paws. Another puzzle piece clicking into place for a self-fulfilling prophecy, he thinks. The cat doesn’t seem to think much about prophecies or old ghosts or the eventual downfall of the earth. She doesn’t seem to think about much in general, actually.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As a treat he decides to get her some of the good cat food, pure chicken filet. The can is tiny and opening it is more of a struggle than he expected. He wishes he could give her this all the time, she deserves the luxury, but she needs a variety. Vitamins and all that. Quickly, he glances at his bottle of vitamin supplements, suspciously unopened. Well, maybe they have that in common. The cat food smells...just like chicken actually. Not particularly good chicken but certainly not the worst he's eaten and not the usual acidic stench of cat food. He could eat this too, probably. Might be healthier than what's in his fridge and it's not like he would know the difference.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He does not eat the cat food.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On a Sunday night she first jumps on the bed. It’s too quiet and he doesn’t even notice her until there’s a sudden pressure against the side of his leg and he doesn’t know what it is and it’s too dark to see it’s too dark to see it’s too dark-</p>
<p>Her purr is loud enough to reach him. He lays, frozen and staring up at the ceiling and waits for his breath to even out again. The purring doesn’t stop.</p>
<p>It becomes a part of routine. When he turns off the light to go to sleep, the cat jumps into bed. Some days she’s just lying at the foot of the bed, curled up without touching him. Other times she presses up against his side or tries to lie comfortably on his stomach. He tries to stay still without disturbing her but there’s no quiet falling asleep like this for him. His arms twitch at his side and every fiber of his blanket burns against his skin and the longer he tries to be the still the more he can feel every inch of his skin start to crawl. The cat doesn’t begrudge him for moving. Instead, she just curls up in his arms and rumbles on steadily. Maybe this is a lesson in forgiveness.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She easily fits into one of his hands. They both find this out when she tries to hunt down a wasp and in some blind panic Dimitri forgets about his fear of hurting her, or perhaps he just knows that the wasp is going to hurt her <em>more</em>, and he scoops her up quickly with one hand before holding her tightly against his body. Felix, the cat, chirps angrily at being denied her prey for a second before seemingly immediately forgetting what she was going after in the first place. Heart hammering in his chest Dimitri kneels down on the floor, still hugging the cat, and gently sets her down. She immediately rolls on her side, stretches, yawns and then stares up at him expectantly with huge eyes. Gingerly Dimitri reaches out to scratch behind her ears. The cat lets out a content little noise and nuzzles against his hand and he can feel a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He wakes up with a start to a loud noise and something hitting his face. Then, the sound of breaking glass and Felix’s hurried little footsteps as she flees the scene. He keeps his eye closed, just breathes deeply and wonders whether he can just fall back asleep instead of facing the inevitable. A few weeks ago, he would’ve. Just one more little problem to face in the future but certainly not enough to wade through the fog for. But now he has to. Slowly he blinks and rolls over until he can see his alarm clock. Barely 8am. It’s good, probably, this way he doesn’t waste most of the day before even being awake but he can’t help mourning the for once peaceful escape of sleep.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s a splattering of glass shards next to his bedside table. He needs to get up. He needs to get up. If it was just himself, he might have left it like this, for weeks on end perhaps until Sylvain forces his way into the apartment to clean every nook and cranny. He <em>needs</em> to get up. It’s not just about himself now. He watches the seconds tick by on the alarm clock. With every ounce of his strength he manages to swing his legs out of bed, careful not to step on glass although he doubts he would feel much of it. When he look over Felix, the cat, is standing in his bedroom door, wide eyed as usual. She lets out a high pitched pitiful meow, then sprints off to go circle her food bowl. Dimitri leans forward until his forehead touches his knees and exhales in a sigh.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It barely takes three minutes to clean up the broken glass, in the end. An impossible task made easy. Felix, the cat, scarfes down her breakfast in the same amount of time and then immediately tries to climb up his leg.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe he’s not going to break her. Maybe there’s more potential for gentleness in his hands than he thinks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But maybe, most of all, there’s proof that even he can be deserving of trust.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/InkCaviness">twitter</a><br/>(where you can also find pictures of my own Fewix The Cat) (also don't worry im aware indoors cats shouldn't be kept alone, im in the process of finding her a friend)<br/>comments always highly appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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